Kimberly Quinn
DePaul University, IL·Psychology
More than half of all people live in cities, and the trend is growing. Cities offer public spaces where people meet and build community.
- Fields
Psychology
Social Science
Public Health & Epidemiology
- Topics
public spaces
urban environments
nature exposure
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2027
What they work on
- Identify features of urban and natural public spaces linked to psychological restoration and well-being, using physiological reactivity, eye tracking, motion tracking and self-report data from residents of three U.S. cities.
- Document similarities and differences in how marginalized and non-marginalized residents experience public spaces, combining qualitative accounts of lived experience with survey and archival neighborhood data.
- Develop a social impact protocol for assessing and designing healthier, more equitable public spaces, informed by the study data and an advisory board of community, cultural and policy organizations.
More about the research
Yet time spent in urban settings, compared with natural ones, is linked to poorer physical and mental well-being. Public spaces are not all alike, though. Parks, plazas and streets differ sharply within a single city in their quality and in what they offer residents. This project asks which features of public spaces help people recover from stress and feel well, and whether marginalized and non-marginalized residents experience these spaces differently.
Why it matters
City planners, designers, cultural institutions and community groups could use the evidence-based design standards and assessment protocol from this work to build public spaces that support well-being. Residents of neighborhoods with poorer-quality public spaces, including marginalized communities, may benefit most from parks and plazas designed with their experiences in mind.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Caitlin Ryus
Yale University, CT·Public Health & Epidemiology
Explore qualitatively how non-congregate housing policies may affect mental illness among people experiencing homelessness, including a landscape analysis of how shelter and healthcare providers partner on housing needs.
Elizabeth Cashdan
University of Utah, UT·Psychology
Measure how much children explore their surroundings without adult supervision, and in which environments, using phone GPS tracking combined with a vegetation index that rates how green each location is.
Lesley Weaver
University of Oregon, OR·Social Science
Compare physical health and health risk factors across four groups of people experiencing houselessness—unsheltered, encampment, temporary shelter and permanent supportive housing—to find which settings drive health differences.
The school
DePaul University: 4 labs on PI Pages, $11M a year on research, 47 research doctorates a year.
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